Influencer marketing is on a collision course with the US Federal Trade Commission and its new guidelines for endorsements and testimonials in advertising. The revised guides span consumer endorsements, expert endorsements, endorsement by organizations, and disclosure of material connections between advertisers and endorsers. The FTC has already said it expects the revised guidelines to affect most businesses that advertise in … Read More
Transparency and agency-placed content on UGC sites
Transparency is one of the words that has become a victim of Web 2.0. Â Everyone has their own idea of what transparency means in social media, and what constitutes embracing transparency. Â A good example: the recent MobileCrunch expose on Reverb Communications and the Apple App Store. The plot is simple enough: Â an integrated PR-marketing agency has paid staff (whether employees … Read More
What’s My Line: Analyst, Blogger, or Analyst Blogger?
Richard Stiennon raises an interesting point in his Threat Chaos post, Finding Cool Companies: should analysts who blog at online media networks — in this case, ZDNet — be given media passes to competitor’s events — in this case, Gartner Symposium? I don’t think so, but it does raise an amusing question of ethics. Stiennon, a former Gartner analyst, recently … Read More
David Gee Issues Call for Analyst Accountability in HP Company Blog
A post in the HP-branded blog by David Gee, “True and Fair View…”, calls for the industry analyst community “to commit to the same standards of transparency, neutrality, governance and liability” as he believes can be found in the post-Sarbox world of financial investment advisors. The post is certainly not an HP OpenView management endorsement of IT analyst research quality or … Read More
Full disclosure overdue from high-tech analysts
Scott Kirsner quotes me in his Boston.com October 18th @Large column on technology. The column explores the need for greater transparency among industry analysts with regards to their vendor revenues. Mr. Kirsner also quotes Ian Campbell, Judith Hurwitz, Rob Enderle and Tony Friscia from the analyst side, and Nick Desai, chief executive of Juice Wireless, a Los Angeles company that … Read More
Rob Enderle on Ethics and Industry Analysts
Rob Enderle assesses PR agency and vendor concerns over industry analyst integrity and ethics in an insightful column published by TechNewsWorld. In the column, Mr. Enderle offers a well-rounded perspective on the evolution of the industry analyst practices in question, and describes the typical industry analyst perspective on potential conflicts of interest. The column expands on his comments reported in … Read More